Indian Food Trivia
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50 free Indian Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free Indian food trivia questions with answers. Indian food is really dozens of cuisines, and this quiz eats its way across all of them. It covers the Delhi restaurant that gave the world butter chicken and tandoori chicken, biryani's Persian ancestry, the Goan pork dish that became vindaloo, Kashmiri rogan josh, dosa and idli from the south, samosas with a Persian name, naan and chapati, paneer, ghee, garam masala, masala chai, dal, papadums, thalis, pani puri, vada pav, dhokla, rasgulla and its Bengal-Odisha feud, gulab jamun, jalebi, kulfi, chaat, the spices in the tin, the ghost pepper, Mumbai's dabbawalas, and chicken tikka masala, balti and the other curries Britain invented. Easy questions ask what naan is baked in and what paneer is made from; the hard ones want the Middle Persian word behind samosa, the Sanskrit roots of basmati and the year the ghost pepper was crowned. Written for foodies, curry-house regulars, home cooks and pub-quiz teams. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the dishes, spices and their histories, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Delhi's Moti Mahal restaurant is credited with inventing which curry by simmering leftover tandoori chicken in tomato gravy?
Butter chicken
Butter chicken has two claimants, Moti Mahal's partners Kundan Lal Gujral and Kundan Lal Jaggi: in 2024 Gujral's family took Jaggi's heirs to court over which man first rescued leftover chicken with gravy.
Q 02Which Hyderabadi stew of slow-pounded grain and mutton is widely eaten to break the Ramadan fast?
Haleem
Haleem reached Hyderabad with Arabs who served the Nizams, as a version of the Arab dish harees, and took on local spices; it won geographical indication status in 2010.
Q 03Where in a tandoor does naan bake?
On the wall
On the wall: the flattened dough is pressed onto the hot clay inner side of the oven, where it bakes flat, scorched on one face and puffed and blistered on the other.
Q 04Tandoori chicken is marinated in spices and what before it goes into the oven?
Yogurt
Yogurt and a spice blend coat the skinned chicken before it is skewered and roasted over charcoal; the famous red comes from chilli powder or simply from food colouring.
Q 05Biryani is thought to descend from a rice dish from which cuisine?
Persian
Persian: the name comes from biryan, 'roasted' or 'fried', and the dish is thought to have grown out of pilau in the Mughal court kitchens, though some argue it reached South India earlier.
Q 06Vindaloo takes its name from a dish brought to Goa by which European colonisers?
The Portuguese
The Portuguese brought carne de vinha d'alhos, meat pickled in wine vinegar, and the name wore down to vindaloo; the 'aloo' has nothing to do with the Hindi for potato, though some cooks add potatoes because of it.
Q 07Rogan josh is a signature dish of which Indian region's cuisine?
Kashmir
Kashmir: rogan josh anchors the multi-course wazwan feast, its red coming from mild local chillies and alkanet rather than tomatoes; the dish came north with Mughals escaping the summer heat of the plains.
Q 08Which cooking technique defines a korma?
Braising
Braising: the meat is seared, then cooked long and slow in very little liquid; kormas began in the Mughal court kitchens and were later toned down for Anglo-Indian and then British tastes.
Q 09A dosa is a South Indian crepe made from a fermented batter of rice and what?
Lentils
Lentils, hulled and soaked, are ground with rice and left to ferment overnight, which gives the thin, crisp dosa batter its slight tang.
Q 10Which soft, steamed rice cake is South India's classic breakfast, served with coconut chutney?
Idli
Idli may not be Indian in origin: one food historian has suggested the fermenting and steaming came from Indonesia, since Indian recipes before 1250 use neither rice, a long ferment nor steam.
Q 11Which fried pastry did Ibn Battuta describe at the 14th-century Delhi court, stuffed with minced meat, almonds and pistachios?
Samosa
Samosa: he knew it as sambusak, a small pie served before the third course of a royal meal, and around 1300 the court poet Amir Khusrau wrote that Delhi's nobles relished samosas made with meat and ghee.
Q 12What sets naan apart from an everyday chapati?
It is leavened
It is leavened: naan dough rises with yeast before baking in a clay oven, while a chapati is unraised flour-and-water dough cooked on a griddle, then puffed up over direct heat.
Q 13Chapatis are made from atta, which is milled from what?
Whole wheat
Q 21By what other names is the street snack pani puri known?
Golgappa and phuchka
Golgappa and phuchka are the northern and eastern names for the same snack: a hollow fried shell is filled, dunked in spiced water and eaten whole in a single bite.
Q 22Vada pav, a fried potato dumpling in a bread bun, is the most famous street snack of which city?
Mumbai
Mumbai: Ashok Vaidya is often credited with opening the first vada pav stall outside Dadar railway station in 1966, selling a cheap meal that could be eaten on a crowded commuter train.
Q 23Which two Indian states have both won geographical indication status for their versions of the rasgulla?
West Bengal and Odisha
Whole wheat: atta is milled from the entire kernel, bran included. The chapati's own name comes from a Hindi word for pressing flat, after the way the dough is slapped between the hands.
Q 14Traditional papadums are made from the flour of which pulse?
Black gram
Black gram flour is worked into a dough, shaped into thin rounds and dried, traditionally in the sun; the brittle discs are then deep-fried or flipped over an open flame until crunchy.
Q 15How is paneer made?
By curdling milk with an acid like lemon juice
Paneer is made by curdling milk with an acid like lemon juice or vinegar, then draining and pressing the curds; the acid-set cheese does not melt, so cubes keep their shape when fried or simmered.
Q 16What is ghee?
Clarified butter
Ghee is clarified butter: butter simmered until its water evaporates and the milk solids brown and settle, leaving a pure, long-keeping fat that withstands high heat.
Q 17What does 'garam masala' literally mean?
Hot or warm spices
Garam masala literally means hot or warm spices: the warmth comes from dry-roasted pepper, cloves, cinnamon and cumin, and cooks usually stir the blend in just before a dish is finished.
Q 18Masala chai is made by brewing which kind of tea in milk and water with spices?
Black tea
Black tea became an everyday drink in India only in the 20th century, after the planters' Indian Tea Association promoted it at railway stations, where vendors took to adding large amounts of milk and sugar.
Q 19What are dals?
Dried, split pulses
Dals are dried, split pulses, and the name says so: it comes from a Sanskrit root meaning 'to split'. The same word also covers the soupy stew cooked from them.
Q 20What does the Hindi word 'thali' literally mean?
A plate or tray
Thali literally means a plate or tray; the word came to stand for the whole meal of small dishes arranged in bowls on the round metal platter.
West Bengal got 'Banglar rosogolla' in 2017 and Odisha 'Odisha rasagola' in 2019, after a long feud over who invented the syrupy cheese ball.
Q 24Dhokla, a steamed savoury sponge, is native to which state?
Gujarat
Gujarat: dhokla batter of rice and split chickpeas is left to ferment and is then steamed rather than baked, which gives the cake its light, spongy crumb.
Q 25Gulab jamun is made mainly from khoya, which is what?
Milk reduced to a soft dough
Milk reduced to a soft dough: khoya is milk simmered in an open pan until the water has gone. Gulab jamun means 'rose berry', after its rose-water syrup and the dark jamun plum.
Q 26How is jalebi batter shaped as it goes into the hot oil?
Piped in pretzel-like spirals
Piped in pretzel-like spirals into hot fat, the coils fry crisp and are soaked in syrup; the sweet is thought to have come from West Asia, where a recipe was written down by the 13th century, and Indian texts mention it from about 1450.
Q 27Kulfi is denser than ice cream because it skips which step?
Churning
Churning beats air into ice cream as it freezes; kulfi's boiled-down milk is poured into moulds and frozen still, so it sets dense and melts more slowly.
Q 28The word chaat comes from a Hindi verb meaning what?
To lick
Chaat comes from the Hindi verb chaatna, 'to lick' or 'to taste', as in licking your fingers clean after a tangy street snack.
Q 29Kheer, or payasam, is what kind of dish?
A rice pudding
A rice pudding: kheer is rice simmered in sweetened milk. In legend, the payasam served at Kerala's Ambalappuzha temple repays a king's chess debt to Krishna, grains of rice doubled on every square.
Q 30Which spice, hand-picked each autumn around Pampore, tints biryanis and festive sweets gold?
Saffron
Saffron is the dried stigma of a crocus: each flower yields just three threads, which can only be picked by hand, and that labour makes it the most expensive spice in the world.